Played junior football in Wiltshire schools. Played for Westbury
United FC and also played with Portsmouth FC as an amateur in November 1950,
making two league appearances. He turned professional with Bristol City FC in June
1951. Retired in May 1966 after 597 league appearances and 315 league
goals. In his heyday at Bristol City, the club received offers for
Atyeo from Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and AC Milan. The Italians
were rumoured to be willing to pay £50,000 for him.

Club honours

Football League Division Three South winners 1954-55;

Individual honours

Football League
(two appearances)

Distinctions

When Bristol City replaced the Park End at Ashton Gate in 1994, the new
structure was named the Atyeo Stand. There is also a street named
after him in his home village of Dilton Marsh.

Source

Douglas Lammings' An
English Football Internationalist Who's Who [1990] & Hopegood's The
Hero Next Door.

Atyeo remained a semi-professional
throughout his football career, working first as a quantity surveyor, and
then trained as a mathematician, and taught maths at Kingsdown School,
Wiltshire for 20 years. He also wrote for the Plymouth-based
newspaper, the Sunday Independent.
- An English Football Internationalists' Who's Who. Douglas Lamming
(1990). Hatton Press, p.16/DevonAutographs.com

John Atyeo
- Career Statistics

Squads

Apps

Comp.
Apps

Starts

Sub on

Sub off

Mins.

Goals

Goals
Av.min

Comp.
Goals

Capt.

Disc.

8

6

3

6

0

0

540

5

108 min

4

none

none

Due to the fact that
many matches rarely stuck to exactly ninety minutes long, allowing time
for injuries, errors and substitutions. The minutes here
given can only ever be a guideline and cannot therefore be accurate, only
an approximation.

John Atyeo was the
best-known, best-loved and most accomplished player in the history of
West Country football. 'Big John' to all who knew him, he merited
the epithet for more than his strapping six-foot stature: five strikes
in six games for England, more goals scored for one club (his beloved
Bristol City) than by any star of any era, the extraordinary record of
never being cautioned by a referee in more than 650 senior matches - all
that tells only part of the story. The full measure of the man was
evident in an engagingly open personality, combining the lively
intelligence that made him a successful and enlightened schoolteacher
with the unadorned simplicity of a true countryman.

From his boyhood in Wiltshire, Atyeo was an
outstanding all-round sportsman but, though his talents at rugby and cricket
were enviable enough, it was at football that he excelled. For a
centre-forward, he lacked nothing: big-framed and brawny, majestic in the air,
he possessed both skill and power in either foot and the acumen to apply those
gifts to optimum advantage. Indeed, so colossal was his potential that he was
coveted by the reigning League champions, Portsmouth, who gave him two first
team outings as an amateur in 1950-51 and made strenuous attempts to secure
his signature.

But Atyeo's roots were deep in home soil and
he opted for the more familiar surroundings of Ashton Gate, Ashton Vale, Bedminster. Before long, he
was scoring prolifically for Bristol City and in the mid-1950s offers poured
in from the likes of Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and even Internazionale, the
Milan club. The fee mentioned was pounds 50,000 - at today's inflated
valuations, the equivalent of millions - but he was not to be tempted when in
an era when players were limited to a niggardly maximum wage.

Atyeo's decision was influenced by the need
for more mental stimulus than any game could provide. Throughout most of his
career he played part-time, first working as a quantity surveyor, then
training as a teacher, and but for that semi-professional status must have
represented his country more often. Even with an international strike-rate
close to a goal a game, even after scoring the goal that won England
qualification for the 1958 World Cup finals in Sweden, even though he never
finished on the losing side, he was discarded, the only conceivable
explanation being that the selectors (there was no all- powerful manager then)
objected to a part-timer. No matter, between 1951 and 1956 he served City
royally, scoring 350 goals, helping them win the Division Three South title in
1955, and captaining them to promotion to Division Three 10 years later.

Off the pitch, Atyeo's life was equally
fulfilling. On retirement from football he threw himself into teaching and
went on who became the head of mathematics at a school in Warminster, where he
lived with his wife and four children. He was utterly dedicated and on exam
days would rise early to offer pupils last-minute revision sessions at 7am -
he reckoned there was more satisfaction in helping youngsters than in all his
footballing glory and to the last he was unstinting with his time and effort.

A perceptive columnist for the
Plymouth-based Sunday Independent, John Atyeo was open-minded and astute,
modest and humorous, qualities enhanced by old-fashioned family values yet
tempered by a certain disarming naivety that never left him. His death at
home, following a heart attack, leaves the football scene immeasurably poorer.

'Big John' to all who knew him, he merited
the epithet for more than his strapping six-foot stature: five strikes in six
games for England, more goals scored for one club (his beloved Bristol City)
than by any star of any era, the extraordinary record of never being cautioned
by a referee in more than 650 senior matches - all that tells only part of the
story. The full measure of the man was evident in an engagingly open
personality, combining the lively intelligence that made him a successful and
enlightened schoolteacher with the unadorned simplicity of a true countryman.

From his boyhood in Wiltshire, Atyeo was an
outstanding all-round sportsman but, though his talents at rugby and cricket
were enviable enough, it was at football that he excelled. For a
centre-forward, he lacked nothing: big-framed and brawny, majestic in the air,
he possessed both skill and power in either foot and the acumen to apply those
gifts to optimum advantage. Indeed, so colossal was his potential that he was
coveted by the reigning League champions, Portsmouth, who gave him two first
team outings as an amateur in 1950-51 and made strenuous attempts to secure
his signature.

But Atyeo's roots were deep in home soil and
he opted for the more familiar surroundings of Ashton Gate, Ashton Vale, Bedminster. Before long, he
was scoring prolifically for Bristol City and in the mid-1950s offers poured
in from the likes of Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and even Internazionale, the
Milan club. The fee mentioned was pounds 50,000 - at today's inflated
valuations, the equivalent of millions - but he was not to be tempted when in
an era when players were limited to a niggardly maximum wage.

Atyeo's decision was influenced by the need
for more mental stimulus than any game could provide. Throughout most of his
career he played part-time, first working as a quantity surveyor, then
training as a teacher, and but for that semi-professional status must have
represented his country more often. Even with an international strike-rate
close to a goal a game, even after scoring the goal that won England
qualification for the 1958 World Cup finals in Sweden, even though he never
finished on the losing side, he was discarded, the only conceivable
explanation being that the selectors (there was no all- powerful manager then)
objected to a part-timer. No matter, between 1951 and 1956 he served City
royally, scoring 350 goals, helping them win the Division Three South title in
1955, and captaining them to promotion to Division Three 10 years later.

Off the pitch, Atyeo's life was equally
fulfilling. On retirement from football he threw himself into teaching and
went on who became the head of mathematics at a school in Warminster, where he
lived with his wife and four children. He was utterly dedicated and on exam
days would rise early to offer pupils last-minute revision sessions at 7am -
he reckoned there was more satisfaction in helping youngsters than in all his
footballing glory and to the last he was unstinting with his time and effort.

A perceptive columnist for the
Plymouth-based Sunday Independent, John Atyeo was open-minded and astute,
modest and humorous, qualities enhanced by old-fashioned family values yet
tempered by a certain disarming naivety that never left him. His death at
home, following a heart attack, leaves the football scene immeasurably poorer.
-